[cptskippy]

> However the reason this came into existence was by microsoft's design to commoditize the hardware to drive software sales of its (closed) operating system.

Couldn't get past your rewriting of history just to paint MS in bad light because you don't like them.

[ghaff]

What rewriting of history? The PC (and then volume server) era very much saw previous vertical silos tiled into a horizontal structure with x86 at the processor layer and Windows at the operating system layer. In the 1990s, a lot of computer companies were ready to concede the OS crown to Windows.

(To the degree I'd argue with the statement, it's that it was as much Intel's doing as Microsoft's; Andy Grove even dedicated part of one of his books to this.)

[cptskippy]

Microsoft didn't design or intend the commoditization of PC hardware. It fell into their lap by happenstance and they fought to retain it.

[m463]

I was not putting down microsoft, I think they did the world a favor by bringing us commodity hardware.

fun article:

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/

[cptskippy]

Microsoft didn't set out to commoditize computer hardware, IBM did. IBM literally wrote the manual for IBM AT (later ISA) and then shared it with the world with the intent of commoditizing add-in cards for their PC. IBM however thought that by controlling the BIOS, they would retain control of the PC. COMPAQ reversed engineered the BIOS a year later and essentially dropped control of the PC market into the lap of the owner of DOS, Microsoft.

I think Joel is taking some liberties to push his narrative. Either that or he's regurgitating some nonsense barfed in his ear during his time at Microsoft in the 90s about how it was their plan all along. Microsoft wasn't being savvy with the way it licensed DOS to IBM, they didn't seen the coming reverse engineering of the BIOS. Quite simply, they didn't license DOS exclusively to IBM because they couldn't.

After licensing BASIC, IBM later approached Microsoft to source an OS in part because they had a deadline and because their failure to license CP/M was by virtue of the fact that they were IBM. Gary Kildall heard "IBM" and basically told them to get fucked. Microsoft became their Trojan horse to prevent another Kildall situation.

There's a lot of different stories about the origins of QDOS from Microsoft paying SCP to reverse engineer CP/M to QDOS containing CP/M source code. Regardless, Microsoft didn't have an exclusive license to QDOS when it re-licensed it to IBM. It wasn't a tactical move, Microsoft didn't provide IBM with an exclusive license of QDOS because at the time it simply wasn't there's to give. They managed to acquire ownership of QDOS from SCP prior to the PC launch but again that wasn't with the intent to commoditize computer hardware.

Post PC launch and COMPAQ clone, Microsoft wasn't fully at the helm either. IBM saw the error of their ways and sought to rectify it with PS/2 and MCA. If Microsoft had assumed control then IBM probably wouldn't have teamed up with them to build OS/2. Microsoft did however understand what OS/2 meant for their own bottom line and sought to subvert IBM. I would argue that up until the mid to late 90s, Microsoft was largely protecting it's own interest from IBM who was trying to wrangle back control of the PC market.

Again, Microsoft didn't design this. It wasn't their intent from the onset, the market fell into their lap and they fought off everyone else's attempts to take it away.